


last light

by oriflamme



Series: robots. robots everywhere [23]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Lost Light 25 Spoilers, M/M, Multi, Post-Canon, The Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye (IDW)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 17:42:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16560335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oriflamme/pseuds/oriflamme
Summary: - listen: there's a hellof a good universe next door;let's go





	last light

He visits, from time to time.

Just to check in! See how everyone’s faring.

(He tells them it was an explosion gone wrong. Fact is, two quantum duplications and significant Dead Universe exposure don’t do wonders for one’s spark. 0/10, would not recommend.)

But the briefcase lets him travel. He parks his ship by Censere’s planet (since Censere did most of the work for him), attunes his spark with a twist of the dial, and opens his eyes one universe removed.

The world is brighter, here.

(Whirl makes the countdown timer to let him know how much time he has left. If he stays tuned to alt Brainstorm’s universal frequency too long, one of them will start to decohere. Or maybe they’ll fold together permanently, inseparably entangled.

“Do me a favor, Cinderella?” Whirl says, flipping the clock through the bars of the cell with a practiced flick. “Don’t tell me how I’m doing.”)

They’re happier, here. They’re together - of course they’re happier.

-

He’s not surprised when the alt Rewind looks at him, and _knows_. Memory has a quantum weight like no other, and Rewind has like. Five sets of memories, at this point, all compacted into a tiny, tiny package. When the Functionist universe was first born, Rewind remembered it just by existing. The Rewinds overlap to the point that he accomplishes through memory what Brainstorm required a ship-sized life-support system and a time-space ‘case to achieve.

He lives a happier life.

Back home, they call it a neuro-degenerative disease because they don’t know any better. It’s not. Rewind just…prioritizes what matters more. He doesn’t censor himself when he talks about things that happened elsewhere. He chooses the universe where they remember Rung; where they travel, and have adventures, and Rodimus contemplates painting the entire _Lost Light_ in the image of a Rodimus star just to see Megatron bang his head against the wall, and there are no goodbyes.

He’s even less surprised when Rewind starts bringing Chromedome with him. Chromedome plugs him in, their minds intimately, inextricably linked, and they cohabitate in the life of the Rewind who got the better end of the bargain. Alt Rewind doesn’t mind, either. At this point, there’s enough multiversal memory space in Rewind’s quantum archive that they can share without erasing each other.

They only come back for the funerals. People nod and whisper sadly about Rewind’s condition, as the two of them converse casually about the events of the universe adjacent. They think Chromedome’s just adapted to humor his conjunx.

(Sometimes, Brainstorm’s tempted. Take a page out of Prowl’s book, hook himself up to a Möbius generator, and let his beatdown body waste away while he stays. Live the dream.

But unlike Rewind, he can’t tell if the other Brainstorm’s still around when he visits. It just feels like being himself.

The other Brainstorm won the flip of the coin. Better they just timeshare.)

-

“Ratchet’s gonna burn out soon,” he lets alt First Aid know, in passing, after the funeral. “Chop, chop!”

First Aid, quite wisely, chops. Ratchet gets a new lease on life, grumbling all the way. Drift never has to call Cyclonus back from his and Tailgate’s latest trip to help him engrave permanent grief glyphs all over his frame.

Brainstorm is the best friend. It is him.

“Meddler,” Rewind says, amusement warm in his field when Brainstorm meets him and Chromedome for drinks. Their fingers are laced together, always. Chromedome’s still a grief counselor here and now, in memory of Rung.

Brainstorm jabs a finger at him before taking a sip of his waiting engex. “He’s gonna live, and he’s gonna _like_ it,” he says, emphatically.

Whirl’s tinkering with a new watch at the next table over, his optic squinted as he peers at the tiny components. He caved to Ratchet a couple centuries ago, and now his claws sport tiny modifications. Little tools that fold out of the sides, so he can do the microscopic level work without ‘borrowing’ all of Ratchet’s best medical screwdrivers. “Do me a favor,” he says, distracted. “Don’t _ever_ tell me what they’re doing back there.”

“You hugged Cyclonus the other day,” Brainstorm informs him, just to be an ass.

This Whirl, who’s been shacked up with Tailgate and Cyclonus for the past few million years, ever since he accidentally tagged along on their honeymoon, rolls his optic. “Riveting,” he says, deadpan.

“Oy!” Swerve bellows, from behind the counter. “Grimlock! I told you! No kids in the bar!”

“Swerve, I’m like. Three million years old, now,” Sari says, swinging her legs under the table. The Scavengers are back for their boisterous semi-annual visit, and their weird adopted daughter tagged along. Her red eyes are mischievous as she spins her VTOL fans to hop up into Grimlock’s silent, imposing embrace.

“Fort Max still hasn’t decided on the legal drinking age for hybrids under our new, self-imposed galactic law. Boot it!”

Sari starts chugging Grimlock’s drink. Swerve’s shriek is so high-pitched it could shatter glass.

-

They still haven’t worked their way back around to the parts of the universe that are familiar. No one they meet, organic or mechanical or somewhere in between, seems to have heard of Cybertronians before. Brainstorm, Nautica, and Perceptor could _probably_ figure out where this universe diverged from their original one - what the critical factor is that differentiates the two - but they’ve all mutually agreed to let it happen naturally.

They have all the time in the world.

-

“I live out the sentence,” Megatron says, when Brainstorm teleports in to offer to adjust the magical swirling vortex in his chest to let him come visit. “He atones. Lives a better life. Let it be enough.”

(As if locking up an ancient prisoner in a secret, self-sustaining cage isn’t just _begging_ for someone to accidentally unleash him, a bajillion years down the road, once he’s gone thoroughly insane from solitary confinement. Brainstorm’s absorbed enough Earth media via Swerve, Whirl, and Rewind to know that never ends well.)

“Yeah, well, sorry. I have a flagrant disregard for Prowl’s authority. And the law. It’s a chronic condition. Tragic. And I’ve brought you both Minimus’ latest attempts at poetry.” He dangles the datapad where Megatron can only glare at it cross-eyed. “Admit it, I’m the best not-really-double agent ‘con you’ve ever had. So take it, or I teleport a table in here and read it in my best beat poet voice.”

“This is the real torture,” Megatron says, with a deep sigh.

-

The longer he waits, the crueler it seems it would be to tell the others.

Rodimus, especially. He’s struggling. The _maybe_ gives him hope. The _knowing_ might break him.

Happiness hurts in the hardest way.

(“Which version of us would be real?” Rodimus had asked, when Brainstorm first ran the numbers. Because he still doesn’t understand. “Who winds up staying - the originals, or the copies?”

Brainstorm can’t say.)

-

…Hold up.

-

Killmaster looks great, for someone who spent the past few million years locked in his own pocket dimension. He only pauses for a second when Brainstorm shows him the Decepticon insignia on the inside of his maskplate.

It’s the science that gets him to pay attention.

“You attempted to abscond to a different universe via duplication?” Killmaster clicks his vocalizer in disdain, scanning Brainstorm with a critical optic. “Sloppy. Unnecessary. Your archivist has already achieved transcension.”

-

“Hey, Brainstorm?” Velocity asks, when she and Nautica arrive. For once, Rodimus isn’t dead last - he’s miserably hungover, but Velocity was attending a medical conference a galaxy away and has a legitimate excuse. “Why are we holding this reunion on top of Megatron’s super-secret, high security penitentiary?”

Brainstorm starts counting off on his fingers. “Because a) maximum dramatic effect; b) we get to put our middle fingers up at Prowl -”

Whirl, cuffless, raises a cube of engex. “Hear, hear!”

“- And c) I made a to-scale replica of Megatron, and by Rung we’re gonna use it before someone asks me why I needed one,” Brainstorm finishes.

Drift looks disturbed. “Why _did_ you need one?”

“Who the heck is Rung?” Nautica asks, frowning.

They’ll thank him later. “Because I can,” Brainstorm says, and then gets up on the table to clink a spoon against his martini glass. Everyone looks up at him with varying degrees of expectancy and apprehension. “Thank you all for coming! See you on the other side!”

Then, as he takes his mask off and tips the glass back, a massive green, circular glyph array flares under their feet. Because Killmaster appreciates the value of _presentation._

-

He wakes up with his spark humming in his chest. Whole and entire. He’s lived two lives, but the overlap is a comfort.

For Rewind, it's just making it a little more permanent.

Someone thumps frantically on the door of his habsuite to the beat of ‘You Got The Touch’; Brainstorm takes his time rolling off the recharge slab to go answer it.

Rodimus blazes, his smile as bright as the sun. “Brainstorm, you absolute madmech,” he says, and then spins him around in a wild hug. While Brainstorm stumbles back, Rodimus transforms and tears off down the hall, whooping as he goes. “Best! Day! Ever!”

-

They’re all home.


End file.
